


The Thing About Nightmares

by kittensandcake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I suppose, M/M, PTSD, PTSD John, PTSD nightmares, here is it, idk if they're accurate or not but hey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:39:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4399451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittensandcake/pseuds/kittensandcake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing About Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> I'd just like to thank unofficialdragon for the beta (thanks for sorting out my grammar! xx) and to the anon who requested this, some hurt/comfort with extra fluff thrown in <3

The thing about nightmares, was that they crept up on John. He didn’t get a warning, he didn’t get an uneasy feeling a few hours before bed, he didn’t even get given notice when one was about to pounce on him. It would have been fine if it was a normal nightmare, one that had most people jerking awake only to roll over a few minutes later and go back to a nice, peaceful sleep. For John, nightmares and sleepless nights came hand in hand. And they weren’t just bad nightmares. They were waking up in a cold sweat, shaking, trembling all over as the darkness seemed to close in one him nightmares, ones that he could still see behind his eyelids if he even dared to shut them again, as if he was being punished for even thinking that he could have a few hours of rest before having to get up and function like a normal human being. 

Most of the time his nightmares were restricted to his bedroom, where the loneliness and the lack of light from the streetlamps outside catapulted him back to the heat of Afghanistan, Helmand, Kandahar, it didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was that he was back, and it was so infuriating and terrifying in equal measure that sometimes John could do little else but lie there, frustration making tears form at the corners of his eyes and fear causing them to trickle down his face. John Watson did not cry. But in the solitude of his own room, sometimes, he was allowed to. 

Either way, sleeping alongside Sherlock definitely helped. He hardly ever got nightmares now, especially with how often he was going on cases and distracting himself with work. Most of the time, when they were both half asleep on the sofa already, arms and legs draped about carelessly, going to bed was a simple case of undressing and passing out together. Occasionally they were both awake enough for sex, which tended to be on the weekends, and then they would pass out a little quicker, and a little sweatier than usual. So far, no nightmares. He’d had one when Sherlock had gone away to Malta for a few days to sort something over there, but when the man had come back John had meticulously cared for himself, and knew that not even Sherlock would be able to see the dark circles under his eyes. To Sherlock’s knowledge, John was fully functioning, limp and nightmares gone without any chance of them coming back. 

So when John was lying there, one arm across his chest and the other brushing along Sherlock’s back, he was surprised to smell dry grass and drier earth in his nose, his brow furrowing even as he slept. It was a vivid dream, yes. But a dream nonetheless. He tried to just ignore it, until the first whine of a bullet shot past his ear. There was shouting. Lots of it. John’s ears were full of it, it was everywhere, shouting and cursing and screaming as bullets whizzed past them, the distant sound of an IED rumbling in his ears and rocking the ground beneath him. “Green,” He’d been trapped behind a car, an old burnt out car, John had to get around to him. Whenever he moved bullets peppered the walls behind him leaving pockmarks varying from the size of a coin to the size of a fucking dinner plate, and there were so many, why couldn’t he get to Green, he was fucking hurt, why was no-one helping him, "Green-" John jerked straight upright, a hand over his heart. It was pounding there in his chest, he was alive, he was alive, he was alive, but the way that his hands shook and the room spun around him begged to differ. He had to fucking calm down. He could not wake Sherlock up. “Breathe, fucking breathe, Watson." His feet shook as he slid them from the sheets and onto the wooden floorboards. Where was he? 221B. What was the time? After a glance at the clock…Three fifty two. His name was John Watson, and he was not in Afghanistan. 

Sherlock was woken by a sudden shift in the mattress, followed by a sharp gasp that meant John wasn’t doing well. It had been one of the proper nights that Sherlock had actually slept, after slipping from case-mode into the post-case slump, but he still slept as lightly as ever. He rolled over and sat up a little, watching. John was hunched, the light of his alarm clock giving him a strange, sickly kind of look. What was the matter now? “If I kicked you again, I’m sorry,” Sherlock slurred, shuffling forwards with every intention of going back to sleep. But…no. That wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all. If he ever kicked John, he generally got a well-meaning kick back, before they’d gravitate back together and there'd be no hard feelings. And John hadn’t even responded to him. 

“John?”

Christ, so he had woken Sherlock up. A shame that a “Go back to sleep, I’m fine,” would only make him more inquisitive. Silence wouldn't be much better. So he breathed. Recollected himself. He rubbed both hands over his face – minding the tear tracks – and sniffed. 

“I just…nightmare. I need a moment, you…go back to sleep. Yeah?” His voice was coarse for a whole range of reasons, and John didn’t want to explain them now. He got up from the bed, mattress creaking softly before he was walking across floorboards and taking his dressing gown as he went. 

“John?” Sherlock wasn’t going to have this, especially after John had had a nightmare. He didn’t need to be an expert – which he was – to know that John’s nightmares were more than just a little fright from some monsters. This was....more important than sleep. Sherlock lifted himself up from the bed and John stopped in the doorway, each man watching the other. It was like some kind of standoff; if Sherlock moved, so would John. And if John moved…Sherlock would ultimately follow. Sherlock watched John’s shoulders as they slumped, watched his hand hang up the dressing gown again without even needing to look, and finally watched his figure slide back into bed, leaning up against the headboard. 

“Look…lets just go back to sleep,” John murmured in a quiet voice, as he watched the outline of Sherlock move across the bed towards him, stopping a few inches before they could touch. “I don’t want to talk about it. I can still see it, and I don’t want to…revisit anything. Not after just seeing it in bloody technicolour,” He rubbed his hands with his face again, and felt Sherlock move closer. It was bizarre, in a way; to have Sherlock so close and so attentive, yet not adding his own thoughts to the conversation. Was he alright? Had all the groaning and the almost-scream scared him into silence? John let out a huff of a breath, looking across in the darkness to what he was fairly sure was Sherlock’s face. It was strange. He wanted to be angry, he wanted to bloody shout and scream at the unfairness of it all, he wanted Sherlock to make a wrong comment or something so he could go off on one. But Sherlock was just…being silent. Silent, and listening, and…Jesus fuck. Little by little, John felt the anger drain from his body, being replaced by with a kind of bone-deep exhaustion, a kind that only settled into his body after such a nightmare. “I’m sorry I woke you up,” There was a soft smile on his face, and when John lifted a hand to Sherlock’s cheek the other leaned into it, covering it with his own palm. 

“John, I…you probably should talk about these things,” Sherlock murmured after a while, just holding John’s hand close before he moved it from his face, taking it in both of his own. “I may not be the best person to talk to, seeing as I do talk at you most of the time, but I-“

“Sherlock, really,” John shook his head, squeezing the other’s hand back. “It’s nice not being kicked out of bed. Believe me, that’s…happened a few times,” His smile weakened, and he was eternally glad for the darkness that made it damn near impossible to tell what someone looked like. But Sherlock could probably tell from the sound of his voice, or something like that. And Sherlock did. He pursed his lips, crawling up closer and pulling John to him. The other didn’t resist one little bit, and after a bit of arranging, John found himself lying with his head on the other’s chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. 

“I’m not going to kick you out of bed,” He murmured, and John could hear the reverberations of his voice through his chest as a hand stroked across his shoulder. It all felt a bit much at first, and John’s fear returned to him, making his palms sweat and his heart start doing rabbit-jumps in his chest. Sherlock must have felt it, for his hands instantly came to John’s face, and he shifted down so they were eye-to-eye. 

“John,” His voice was soft, but steady. He acted almost like an anchor for John as he gripped Sherlock’s wrists, feeling his pulse thrum just beneath his skin.

“John. You’re here. Not there. You’re here with me, in London, in 221B, in bed. Our bed.”

It was surprisingly soothing, listening to his voice, usually so energetic or apathetic, just... speaking. The next moment, John found himself breathing at a normal rate once again. His heart still thrummed beneath his chest, and he still felt as if he was out of his own skin, but slowly, surely…In time, his heartbeat slowed and matched to the pulse in Sherlock’s wrists. He breathed through his nose and out of his mouth. John moved one of his to cup the back of Sherlock's neck. Their foreheads coming into contact with his. Sherlock was cool. Either that, or John’s forehead was warm. He wasn’t quite sure at that moment. Perhaps both were true.

“I’m sorry,” John mumbled a few moments later, only to be replied with a derisive snort and an unseen eye roll. Whenever Sherlock snorted an eye roll was almost always involved.

“Please. You deal with my mess, my experiments, my mad days and nights and everything in between…and you think one nightmare is enough to put me off?” Sherlock huffed, and he heard John chuckle softly. Good. If there was one thing that Sherlock could do that John liked, it was to act like his haughty self. 

“Git,” There it was. John Watson was back. He sighed and lifted a hand from Sherlock’s wrist to smooth over the man’s cheek, tucking a curl behind his ear. God, when had he felt this relaxed after a bloody nightmare? He doubted it hadn’t been since his uni days, when nightmares were still from bumps in the night and a horror film watched too late in the evening. And then he certainly hadn’t had Sherlock to cuddle with afterwards. 

“Thanks, Sherlock,” John tilted his head up and let their lips graze together, for just a moment, a brief graze to just reassure the both of them. Sherlock returned it as his fingers stroked through the hair at the nape of John’s neck, humming softly as his hand worked up for a moment. 

“Your hair’s getting long,” He murmured, playing with the slightly longer than usual blond strands with a small smile. “You’ll need a haircut, soon. Or you’ll end up looking like a hippie,” 

“A hippie? Bloody cheek,” John snorted and gave Sherlock a small push, but the smile on his face just continued to grow. This was good. London was so quiet outside, it was as if they were in their own little bubble of sound, one that extended to just past the bedsheets and not much further. He was practically breathing Sherlock’s air now, and pulled back just a bit, taking in one last deep breath and a few moments of silence. Good. This was very, very good. Sherlock simply smiled at John through the darkness and leaned forwards once more, smudging his lips across the man’s forehead. 

“You don’t have to sleep, if you don’t want to,” Sherlock mumbled, feeling a yawn rise in his chest at the very idea of such a thing, and yet John found himself shaking his head, cuddling closer again. 

“No, I…want to try. Just glad I’ve not got work tomorrow, hm?” He settled against Sherlock as an arm looped over his back, tucking under his hip as the other settled under his head, providing the perfect – if only slightly lean – pillow. 

“Hm,” Was all Sherlock hummed back, his own body seeming to grow heavier, his breathing slowing after just a moment. Well, it didn’t take long for him. Not after a case. John smiled as he kissed Sherlock’s collarbone, just once, before he let his eyes fall shut. Maybe now, sleeping after a nightmare wouldn’t be so hard. John liked that idea. He liked it a lot.


End file.
